This morning I woke up to fog so thick that I wondered if perhaps I’d morphed into a another place altogether, like London. The branches of the large oak clinging to the hillside resembled nothing less than a print of a retina found in an old medical book.

I started thinking of France as I made my coffee, even though last night it snowed in Paris of all things, as the author “Becoming Madame” so clearly shows, and I knew that the streets there gleamed white and slippery and the tourists would lie in bed until noon, while the French would line up, as always, for their morning baguettes and croissants, as Madame so succinctly states.

A fire set first thing on a Sunday morning, then a fine Bresse capon set on a spit in front of it for a late lunch, black truffles wrapped in lardo or pancetta, then shoved into the coals. A bottle of 30-year old Chateauneuf…